Hundreds of phone calls and emails flooded prosecuting attorneys who said that existing animal cruelty laws made the videotaped acts only second-degree misdemeanors carrying a $750 fine and 90 days in jail.
Actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest wrote an open letter to Conklin owner Gary Conklin about the cruelty -- and Alex Baldwin linked to the video on the Huffington Post saying "When you see this, you will never again doubt the necessity for and courage of the animal rights movement."
On Memorial Day, 150 police officers had be posted at the dairy because of sentiments like those of blogger Gary Yourofsky who wrote, "I am asking everyone who cares about justice and injustice to bring bolt cutters, bats, crowbars, pitchforks, hammers and wrenches to help destroy every piece of equipment the farm has, and tear down the sheds," according to the Examiner.
Undercover investigations by Chicago-based Mercy For Animals (MFA), which has filmed at over a dozen US egg farms, hatcheries, pig farms, dairy farms and slaughterhouses, are increasingly taken seriously by law enforcement officials. Proof of date, location and worker identity is always documented to address frequent charges from farmers that videotaped acts weren't on their property or weren't done by their employees. MFA investigators are also hired under their own names, not fraudulently, and call their bosses' attention to cruel acts on camera to offset charges they tolerated, abetted or staged acts.
Soon after the Conklin Dairy Farm video release, authorities arrested Billy Joe Gregg, 25, a Conklin employee, on 12 counts of animal cruelty and he is being held at the Tri-County Jail in Mechanicsburg, Ohio on $100,000 bond.
While Gregg is easily demonized -- he allegedly brags on camera about how much he enjoys hurting the animals, news media are calling him the "cow beater" and a firearm was recently found in his car -- the "bad apple" theory wears thin in light of the fact that every farm MFA has randomly selected for investigation has had grisly abuses.
Bigger questions than what's wrong with a Billy Joe Gregg are: why his acts only earn him a second-degree misdemeanor when his gun charge is a felony. Why animal agriculture is allowed the charade of "self-regulation." And why people continue to eat animals raised under the conditions shown in the pictured videos.
The video http://www.mercyforanimals.org/ohdairy/
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